For the third and last of my operatic nights in
Paris, I remained with the Opéra national de Paris,
but moved across town from the Bastille to the
Palais Garnier, famously 'in the style of Napoleon
III'. Christoph Marthaler's production of Katya
Kabanova was on the menu. The Paris Opera had
not staged Katya until as recently as 1988,
in Götz Friedrich's production, though the Belgrade
Opera (!) had presented it in 1959 at the Théâtre
des Nations, and the Opéra-Comique had offered a
French-language version in 1968. Marthaler's
production was first staged at the Salzburg Festival
in 1998, and came to the Palais Garnier in 2004,
moving from one Gérard Mortier stronghold to
another; it is encouraging to note that Nicolas Joel
has not turned his back on every aspect of Mortier's
rule. It is also worth noting that it took Mortier
to bringThe Cunning Little Vixen to the
Paris Opera: I saw
the first, rather wonderful production only
three years ago! The longtime neglect of Janáček,
whether in France, Britain, or elsewhere, is truly
baffling, yet it persists, giving all the more
reason to be thankful for this Katya.

I am not sure why Marthaler's production has been
performed at the Garnier rather than the Bastille;
Friedrich's, apparently, moved to the latter on
revivals. Whether this were the intention or no, the
contrast between the Garnier's preposterously
lovable extravagance - music almost seems beside the
point - and the mise-en-scène was stark
indeed. I can hear some readers groaning at the mere
mention of a drab Eastern European apartment block,
here powerfully evoked by Anna Viebrock's set
designs, but the test is whether the setting works.
For the most part, I think, it does. The original
Ostrovsky play, The Storm,and the
opera are both set in a mid-nineteenth-century
Russian provincial town, but the 'provincial' is
more to the point than the 'mid-nineteenth-century',
and even that could, I imagine, readily be
translated into the suburban. The closed moral world
of the apartment block's inhabitants and their
hypocrisy are searingly portrayed, choral hymn
singing emanating and visible from one of the flats
above. Indeed, one of the great virtues of this
production is a chance to observe some of the
goings-on elsewhere, whether from the 'virtuous',
the potentially sympathetic (the violin soloist, not
in the orchestra, but practising at his window), or
the drunk (comedian, Ulrich Voss, whose shouting and
staggering at the beginning of the third act will
not have been to all tastes). Their uniform turning
away as Katya's torment moves her toward suicide is
simple, powerful, and terrifying. There is, perhaps
loss in that we never reach the Volga, yet
claustrophobia is heightened by Katya drowning
herself in the block's courtyard fountain. I also
found it a little confusing that characters exited
through what appeared to be a wardrobe (this is
hardly Narnia!), but not to worry.

Tomáš Netopil led the orchestra with considerable
verve, although tension was not always maintained as
it might be. The sheer orchestral delight and
dramatic fervour of a conductor such as Sir Charles
Mackerras is not his - yet. Angela Denoke was
suffering from some ailment, according to an
announcement made prior to the performance. I should
never have been able to tell, for hers was a
powerful portrayal indeed. Katya's goodness shone
through, yet never in an unbelievable way; one also
knew that this was a woman, and a woman with needs.
I believed in every word and every note she sang.
Andrea Hill and Ales Briscein make for a winning
couple as Varvara and Kudrjas, bright of tone and
manner, though Varvara's dancing threatens to
irritate after a while, however much it may be
intended dramatically to distinguish her from the
stifling 'morality' of her environment. Not every
performance was so impressive, though. Donald Kaasch
passed muster as Tikhon, but sometimes sounded
vocally as opposed to dramatically weak. (It did not
help, moreover, that he looked more like the
Kabanicha's husband than her son.) Jorma Silvasti's
Boris lacked necessary allure: one needs to have
some sense of what might attract Katya to him.

However, as so often, the Kabanicha threatened to
steal the show, yet creditably did not quite do so.
What a truly appalling character she is! We do not,
it is true, know what has made her like that;
whether it was something akin to what Katya herself
suffers must remain speculation, though one cannot
help but wonder. Be that as it may, her viciousness
seems almost unparalleled in all opera. Jane
Henschel quite made the character her own, no mere
caricature, all the more malicious for presenting a
properly sung portrayal. Interestingly, she will be
singing Mrs Sedley at Covent Garden later this
season: the more vicious the society... Her outdoor
exhibitionism with Vincent Le Texier's nasty Dikoy
points up the hypocrisy nicely; she knows exactly
what she was doing when she waves at the neighbours.
Once they have withdrawn to her apartment, a quick
spurt from the water fountain suggests that all is
over as quickly as one might expect. The selfishness
of the character is almost ritually enhanced by
periodic retreats into her bedroom, where she will
turn on the television or listen to the radio, eat
some chocolates, lie down on the bed, and play with
a squeaky toy. Production and performance work in
tandem.

I was in two minds as to the delivery via
loudspeakers of the choral singing at the end. The
effect was alienating, but I am not quite sure that
gain outweighed loss. More importantly, however, I
was profoundly moved by the performance as whole,
once again marvelling at what a masterpiece this is.
Marthaler will soon be directing more Janáček, in
the guise of The Makropulos Case at this
year's Salzburg Festival, a production to which I
look forward greatly. For those interested, his
production is available (with Denoke and Henschel)
on DVD; I have not seen the performance.
Mark Berry